Wireless internet is all the rage these days. The dream has long been for free municipal Wifi for some, but despite all the plans, that dream has yet to be realized. Earthlink dropped its plans to provide municipal WiFi in San Francisco, with its original partner in its plans, Google, only providing free WiFi in Mountain View(where Google is headquartered). While the dream refuses to die, with Meraki Networks receiving a large amount of Venture Capital to produce its free, ad-supported municipal WiFi in San Francisco, the dream is still far off for most consumers around the country(and world).

It is from this backdrop that the blogosphere has been buzzing for the last day, all because of an article by Bruce Schneier in Wired where he advocates not only stealing WiFi, but also keeping your network open. He advocates this because he’s not too concerned about hackers getting into his network, and as long as his computer is secure, he doesn’t think he has anything to worry about.

He dismisses the legal consequences of doing so by saying that the odds are low, and responds to the fact that the RIAA has been known to sue file sharers simply based on an IP adress by quoting Mark Mulligan of Jupiter Research when he said, “If you’re a file sharer, you know that the likelihood of you being caught is very similar to that of being hit by an asteroid.”

While it is true that the legal consequences are probably remote(for a good analysis of the legal consequences check out this blog post by University of Dayton cyberlaw professor Susan Brenner),  they are still there, and I think that there are dismissed to readily. Even a remote risk is still a risk, and if you are the target of an invesigation the time and expense will ultimately be yours.

Beyond that though, you paid for the bandwidth that others are using, your internet is potentially slower because you are providing it for others. Chances are that your neighbors are wealthy enough if you have WiFi to afford their own internet connection, so while it may be altruistic to do, why make your service worse just by being neighborly.

The blog Lifehacker asked the question of open wireless networks to its readers and found that 85% admitted to using open WiFi networks, while only 15% ran an open network, while both are risky behavior as your communications could be intercepted both ways, its a lot easier to protect your data when you are simply transmitting it over unsecure lines then it is to protect it when you’re letting everyone use your network, especially because of the risk of prosecution coming because of your internet connection being used for illegal activity. 

So until free municipal WiFi becomes a reality, you’re probably better off forking over the money to get your own internet connection, and if where you are doesn’t have WiFi, enjoy it, take in the sites of wherever you’re traveling and don’t worry so much about the internet.

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